Hotel in Nagoya

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Spent part of today in Tokyo. Went to go and see the giant Gundam statue on Odiaba Island in Tokyo Bay. Unfortunately it is apparently no longer there. I was actually really disappointed about this, but the rest of the trip as been so good that over all it’s not a big deal. Go to see Tokyo tower too. Didn’t go all the way up it though. It was so cloudy that we wouldn’t have really been able to see anything, so the fee didn’t seem that worth it. Sadly I couldn’t spend as much time in Tokyo as I would have liked due to the fact that I forgot my bag in the locker at the train station in Kyoto. So we had to get on the train and head back there to pick it up. As it turns out, 8 days is a little too long to leave something in the lockers, so they had moved it to baggage storage. We figured out where it was from a woman at a help desk who actually spoke very good English. The guys at baggage storage however, did not speak any English so filling out the form was a little confusing. Lots of pointing and gesturing was used. But in the end, I got my bag and I don’t think it even cost me anything extra. So after that we got back on the train and we are now in Nagoya. It’s ok, I had never heard of it either. But it’s on the shinkansen line, and it seems like a decent sized city. As Dad and I were walking out to get dinner here in Nagoya, I saw a big green line in the sky. It turned out that it was a really really big laser that was being pointed at the local radio tower. I have no idea where the laser was coming from or why it was being pointed at this tower. But it was really big. Tomorrow starts my stay at the fruit orchard. I’m looking forward to it. I need to find out how long it’s going to take to get there so I can let Kazu know what time to pick us up at the train station. I guess it’s time to find out if the Japanese transit system has an English web page.

(Click to embiggen)

~Daniel

Onwards to Tokyo

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

On the train from Nara to Tokyo

Dad and I had a great day wandering around Nara today. We woke up in….. uh….. somewhere. For some reason the name of, oh wait…. Hiroshima. We were in Hiroshima. We stayed in K’s House youth hostel again. But this time we got a Japanese style room. It was a pretty nice room, though the walls were kinda thin. Didn’t bother me though. After we woke up, Dad made eggs, we cleaned up and headed for the train station. We hopped on the Shinkansen (bullet train) bound for Osaka, then made our transfer to Nara on the local JR lines. It was commented on at the hostel how lucky we were to have these JR Rail passes. (JR or Japan Railways, is a conglomeration of several large rail companies in Japan that covers pretty much the whole country. It also includes many busses and 2 ferries.) These rail passes cost us about $500 each, but are good for unlimited travel on any JR service free of charge. (with the exception of the Nozomi class shinkansen but that’s ok, the Hikari is plenty fast.) Now $500 seems pretty steep for two weeks on the train. But these train tickets cost around $80 each way, more depending on how far you plan on going. Dad and I have been on the bullet train pretty much every day so far. Plus the local trains and the few busses we have been on. These passes have no doubt paid for themselves already. Plus, if we bother to stop at a ticket counter, we can get reserved seats at no extra charge. (Although the non-smoking reserved car was full today) Speaking of these rail passes, we just realized that we left the bag we meant to pick up in Kyoto in its locker at the train station. So we’ll have to get back on the train and get that before I go to the orchard.

At any rate, once we actually arrived in Nara we walked from the train station to the park. On the way we saw a store selling Tabi shoes that we were going to stop at on the way back, but on the way back we either missed it or the guy had closed for the day. We were disappointed. The park was great. Nara is full of dear. They didn’t look that good though since they were all in the process of losing their winter coats. The structures were great though, and the cherry blossoms were blooming. The park was pretty busy, but it really just added to the whole experience. We got in and saw Daibutsu (the big Buddha). I took tons of pictures as usual. I’ve been taking at least 600 photos a day. Replicas and blurry pictures aside, that still leaves me with quite a few photos at the end of the day. It’s going to take me a while before I get everything uploaded to the web to share with you all. I’m thinking about making a power point or something too. We’ll see how ambitious I get. Anyway, after we took in the sights at Nara we headed back to the train station bound for Tokyo.

Dad doesn’t really want to go to Tokyo for anything. But there are a few things that I want to do there. I’m looking to see the Giant gundam statue and the anime district. It’s not the weekend, so I’m not sure if we’ll see people dressed up, but I still want to go. Also I want to experience the Biomass that is Tokyo. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick up some souvenirs and stuff while I’m there too. Anyway, that’s all for now. Hope everybody is doing well.

~Daniel

In Hiroshima. Breif update

Today we went to Miajima and saw the temple gate at high tide. because it was so cold it wasn't too crowded. It actually snowed a little bit on top of the mountain while we were there. We took the gondola up the mountain and walked down. Unfortunately I started the hike with my boots too loose, and then tightened them too much part way through. So now my feet are still sore from earlier. My fault but still annoying considering how much walking we do.

(Click to embiggen)

After Miajima, we went to the A-bomb Dome. It was one of the few buildings not totally destroyed by the Nuke we dropped on Hiroshima, despite it being only 600 meters from the blasts hypocenter (I think that's what it was called). It's like an epicenter, but in 3-D. After seeing the building, we went into the memorial peace museum dedicated to the event, and dismantlement of all nuclear weapons. Honestly I felt kind of weird being an American in that place, considering we dropped the thing on them. It was harder for dad though, since he was alive when we dropped it.

After the Museum we called it an early day and headed back to the hostel, and then out to get dinner at a restaurant called "Tachikoma" (bonus points if you know why that name is awesome) It was a tiny little place on a corner, and we actually passed it like 3 times because I didn't see the sign. We wound up having to get the lady at the counter to walk us there on her way home. The food was great, and huge portions too. He made it right in front of us. I don't even remember what it was called. Noodles, cabbage, some kind of crepe/pancake thing, egg, and sauce. similar to the noodle pizza I had beforehand, but better and bigger too.

Well this brief entry turned out to be not so brief, but enjoy it anyway.

~Daniel

Kyushu: Out of the way, but so worth it.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

On the train, headed for Hiroshima.

So last night, we headed further south into Kyushu to a city called Miyazaki (Like the anime director). It was late at night and the youth hostel was full, so we wound up staying at business hotel. We got a twin room this time. It was pretty small, the bathroom was tiny. But it was enough to sleep and what not. It also had free internet which was nice. To be honest I wasn’t sure what all there was to see there. I had no idea before hand of what we were going to do, all I knew is that most people don’t even go to Kyushu, so I wanted to see it just to say I Had. On our way to the youth hostel by taxi, we passed a cherry blossom party that was going on despite the late hour. After we checked into our hotel we went back to find it, but it was packing up by the time we made it back there. So we got dinner at a local ramen restraunt and headed back to the hotel for sleep.

When we got up in the morning, I was actually a little worried that my whim of going further into Kyushu was going to upset my dad because there wasn’t anything worth seeing. Fortunately I was wrong. We decided to see what the city had to offer and walked off towards the temple marked on the tourist maps. On our way, we stopped by some other little shrine that was kinda neat, but we thought it was the main temple. We were wrong though. A few hundred yards up the street was the entrance to the main temple. It was a cloudy Sunday morning, and it was raining lightly so there was virtually nobody around. Once we got into the temple grounds though, we saw some people dressed in traditional clothing carrying babies. Apparently there was some kind of children’s blessing going on at the temple today, because we saw several groups walking up.

We continued walking around the temple grounds and found out there were some traditional style buildings that had been preserved behind the temple grounds. On our way around the grounds we stumbled upon something rather unexpected, but I think it made Dad’s whole trip a success. There was some kind of botanical farmers market going on. I saw it through the trees and we found a path and walked into a large dirt and gravel parking area where dozens of vendors had put out flowers and trees to sell. Pretty much everything there was oriented around gardens, but not just simple stuff. There were huge rocks with water wheels, large immaculately pruned trees, orchids, mosses, all kinds of stuff. What really made it for Dad though, was the Bonsai. There were a few guys who had 2 or 3 trees each, but there were 2 stalls that were all Bonsai. I don’t know how much you guys know about bonsai, but my dad is a bonsai nut, and he’s pretty good at it too. He was very impressed with the trees we saw there. He saw stuff that he didn’t know the names of (which is a big thing for my dad when it comes to plants) and I did some translation for him and got some information out of the vendors for him. (we are too far south at this point for us to expect people to know any English. They don’t get much in the way of foreign tourists in Kyushu. Heck, most Japanese people don’t even make it down here.) Since dad knows so much about plants, and the botanical names stay the same, he was actually able to communicate with some of the people about plants. He was also having fun showing the Bonsai vendors pictures of his trees. One of the vendors spoke a bit of English actually. We found him working on the roots of a tree at the back of his stall. Turns out they have a common aquantince, and this particular vendors sister travels to America each year to do something Bonsai related. It was pretty cool to see dad talking to somebody about something he loves so much, despite the language barrier. It was lots of pointing and botanical names. The Vendor seemed to be pleased to meet somebody who did bonsai from America.

(Click to embiggen)

After we got out of the garden market we found the traditional style houses. They were really cool. Aside from us there was just one woman who was doing some cleaning, and she actually beckoned us inside. Apparently these houses are not just preserved, but you can actually go in them and look around. So I took of my boots and walked around on the tatami floors of these places. It was great. I took a bunch of pictures, and got dad to take a couple of me as well. (being the one with the camera, I have hardly any photo’s of myself.

Afterward we went next door to the museum. Admission was free and it was a really well put together museum too. We only had time to look around on the first floor, but they had some really cool exhibits that probably would have been more enlightening if we could understand any of what was written. (It was mostly kanji, which I can’t read yet). But they had plenty of taxidermy, models, diagrams and holograms that were cool to look at. They also had some fossils and dinosaur bones/recreations.

We had to leave the museum and head for the train station so we could get to Hiroshima by a decent hour. Our train departed at 1:00, we were scheduled to be in Hiroshima at 8:00. I actually had to stop this entry as I was writing it, because my laptop was about to run out of battery. But while we were on the train, a Japanese fellow started talking to Dad and I. his English was out of practice, but it was a good conversation. He was a plumber who was on his way to an appointment. He told us that we had come to Kyushu at the best time of year possible. He also saved us a lot of hassle by telling us which station to get off and transfer. If not for him we would have probably wasted a bunch of time and over shot our station and wasted like 40 minutes. Fortunately we made our transfer just fine. Although I actually had us get on the wrong train. They both had the same destination, but we got on the one that stopped at every station, so it took longer then needed. Not too bad though. Now I know for next time. At any rate we are in Hiroshima now at another K’s House youth hostel. Dad is downstairs socializing, and I’m gonna go to bed I think. Hiroshima seems like a cool town. And based on the walk from the train station to here, it has the highest concentration of beautiful Japanese women of anywhere we’ve been so far.

~Daniel

P.S. The connection here is not very strong so I'm having trouble uploading images. I'll be sure to upload some later.

Beppu, land of hot springs.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

So today we enjoyed our first Japanese style breakfast. The hotel we stayed at last night came with a free breakfast. I must say, I enjoyed it quite a lot. They had those little packed rice triangles with seasoning sprinkled on top of them. There was also miso soup, mini hotdogs, some kind of pickled something, green tea, and bread. Pretty good stuff if you ask me. After we finished breakfast we got onto a train and headed south into Kyushu.

(Click to embiggen)

Unfortunately we didn’t actually look at a map and wound up overshooting our intended destination. We got back on a train heading the right direction and wound up at our proper destination of Beppo. Beppo is a town full of hot springs. We picked up some sushi at the train station and walked to Beppu Park to eat. While we were there, there was a guy practicing his BMX skills. I took a video and he was kind enough to flash me the peach sign on one of his passes. Today is a Saturday so there were quite a few people out. The park had a small bamboo grove that I absolutely loved. If I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to plant a similar grove on my own property some day. The park also had a section full of cherry trees that were blossoming. There were tons of people who were in the park for a picnic under the cherry blossoms. We didn’t walk through that section though, so I don’t have any pictures of it. I’m sure we’ll run into more later.

After we were done with lunch, we headed to the beach (Beppu is on a bay) to visit one of the hot springs there. For the first time Dad and I got to enjoy Japanese style hot spring. I stayed in the outdoor portion where you are required to wear a bathing suit. Dad was more adventurous and went to the indoor portion. (They alternate days between men and women for the no clothes spring. Today happened to be the men’s day. Both are allowed in the outdoor spring at any time) the hot spring had a nice view of the bay, not that the bay was all that pretty. There were a couple cranes in the bay, and it was kinda dull and gray out. It was still a really nice experience. And after 5 days of walking around with our packs, it was a welcome bit of rest and recuperation.

I wanted to see more of Kyushu so we are heading further south to Miazaki. I have no idea what’s there, but we are going to find out. I’m enjoying the slower train ride though. The shinkansen doesn’t run through most of Kyushu, so we are on the slower trains for most of our traveling here. Its slower, but it gives us a chance to actually see what’s passing by. I’ve found my camera’s sport setting to be great for taking pictures from the moving train. Sometimes it doesn’t focus on what I want though, and by the time I switch to manual focus, we have gotten too far for me to take the picture anymore. More of the cherry trees are blossoming here in the south. And they are everywhere. When you look at the mountains you see light spots among the trees. All of those are cherry trees. We also get a chance to look at peoples gardens. Lots of trees that are cut in the “nowari” style of pruning. It’s that typical Japanese style of pruning where the foliage looks modular and multi tiered. It’s interesting to see an entirely different style of home construction. Many homes are still built in the old style with the tile roofs and sliding doors. And by many, I mean almost all. Sometimes they have western style additions. But the houses all look very Japanese. Also there is much less written in English down here. From what I understand, tourists don’t make it down here too often. Fortunately I’m getting more comfortable asking questions and stuff in Japanese. My comprehension is also improving, though my vocabulary is still limited. I’m also picking up more Kanji. Fortunately its very contextual. So when I see a symbol next to the same picture enough times, I can start to figure out what it means. So far I think I can recognize the ones for: no smoking, danger, stop, and non reserved.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I love looking at the Japanese graveyards. They just don’t seem as grave. Bad pun aside, it’s true. Japanese graveyards don’t look so creepy and uninviting. They are made up of pretty much just the headstones. I think most Japanese get cremated instead of buried. (Saves space I suppose) I kind of regret spending time playing audosurf during this train ride. Not just because my battery is lower, but because I probably missed some really interesting scenery. I’ve never spent so much time traveling through new country before. All my traveling is done in familiar areas (where I already know what’s there) or on I-5 (where there is nothing to see anyway). I’m only seeing one side of the train, and it’s still really interesting, but we’re losing daylight, so we won’t be able to see much in a little while anyway.

I realized that I’m halfway through my time with my dad. It’s been good so far. I’m glad we get along well. I haven’t done any shopping though since we are packing everything around with us. We don’t have much of a plan either. We know we are gonna stop in at Nara, and Tokyo, but it’s pretty open as far as what we’re gonna be doing. Anybody have things they want me to try and find while I’m here in Japan? I know I’m gonna go and track down the huge Gundam statue. It’s on an island in Tokyo bay. (Don’t remember the name though, I’ll have to look that up). Anyway, please leave some comments either here or facebook or through email.

~Daniel

What I did yesterday

Friday, March 26, 2010

Osaka, Himeji, and Kyushu! OH MY!

So we started out this morning in Kyoto at “K’s House Kyoto”, which is the youth hostel we stayed at last night. It was a really nice place and if you ever find yourself in Japan, I highly recommend looking up “K’s House”. There are several around the country. Yesterday we ate breakfast at the little place that is connected to it. We got to eat with a couple of girls from Europe. There was a polish girl named Agnishka, and a British girl named Isabel. I didn’t get the chance to take their picture, but they were fun to talk to. Apparently they don’t eat potatoes with breakfast in Europe.

Anyway, this morning we got on the train and headed towards Osaka. There we got a sort of day pass that included unlimited use of the Osaka subway system, as well as admission to the aquarium. The passes were 2400 yen. I checked at the aquarium, and adult admission there was 2000 yen each, so it was basically a ticket plus unlimited subway use for 400 yen. Pretty good deal. Would have been more worth it if we spent more time on the subway. There was also an enormous feris wheel right next the Aquarium. The largest I’d ever seen. We didn’t go on it, but it was certianly impressive.

(Click to embiggen)

The Aquarium its self was five stories tall. The top story was dedicated to some above ground wildlife, and creatures that live in and out of water like penguins, otters and some sea birds. The lower levels were dedicated to more traditional aquarium dwellers. The main attractions to this aquarium are the spotted manta rays, the finless dolphins (no dorsal fin), and my favorite, the Whale Shark. That’s right, the biggest fish in the sea. These things grow to be like 60 feet long. The ones in the aquarium weren’t quite that big, but they were still impressive. They also had hammerhead sharks which I think are really awesome. I took a bunch of pictures, but it was dark in there and it was very crowded so I couldn’t always make the most of my camera’s settings. I think I got some prety good shots though. I also took a bunch of video which I am currently having problems uploading. I may have to wait until I get to the orchard to figure that stuff out.

(Click to embiggen)

(Click to embiggen)

(Click to embiggen)

After the Aquarium, Dad and I had lunch at the nearby shopping center. Dad wanted something quick and simple, so we wound up getting subway. It was really crowded, so when I saw some other English speaking folk wandering around, I invited them over to sit with us. Turns out they were a Canadian girls school that was on a trip to Japan for their Japanese program. After lunch, Dad and I walked back to the subway, and made the connections to the train station. I want to take this time to mention that using the Japanese subway is really easy. It helps that I can read some of the Japanese characters. But they still make everything easy to understand for foreigners. Lots of big arrows, picture diagrams, and just simple alpha numeric labels. I’ve never been on an American subway, but I get the feeling that they aren’t as nice as this.

Once we got back to the train station, we got on a bullet train and went to Himeji so we could see Himeji Castle. The castle is set for a 3 year renovation, so we wanted to make it before the scaffolding went up. Fortunately we managed to do that. Sounds like the renovation will start full scale after the cherry blossoms are done. (Which is about 3 weeks from now) We got there close to closing time, so Dad and I had a rushed tour of the place. The castle and all the buildings and walls are painted white. It’s really a nice looking place. What amazes me most about these old Japanese castles is that they are built on stone bases that use no mortar what-so-ever. Just gravity and good engineering holding these things up. Oh and I suppose a lot of friction too. I don’t remember how many stories the main castle was, but we climbed many flights of steep stairs to get to the top. There was a cold breeze coming in through any windows that got opened up (tourists can open and close the windows as they walk around, which I thought was pretty cool of them to allow). The breeze was welcome after all those stairs. On the way back down I lost track of my dad in one of the rooms. I got ahead of him so I waited for a while in the shoe room. (We had to take off our shoes and carry them with us through the castle. No shoes on Japanese floors. It was nice to get my boots off for a while though.) The problem was, Dad though I was behind him, so he was waiting for me. We wound up waiting for each other for quite a while. I was less patient then him, figuring at worst we would meet up at the castles single exit. So I continued on and wound up having an ice cream cone from a vending machine at the exit while I waited for dad. He took a while, but he found a cool Russian guy to talk to named Roman. Roman is studying at a Japanese university. He walked with us to the train station, but we were taking separate trains, so we had to say good bye. We exchanged email addresses though. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with him again at some point during my stay.

(Click to embiggen)

(Click to embiggen)

(Click to embiggen)

Once we made it back to the train station and got our packs, we headed up to the tracks where a train was just boarding. Rather than just hopping on like dad wanted to, I decided we should ask and make sure we had the right one, since we couldn’t find the trains destination on the map. Turns out its destination was exactly where we wanted to go. And what’s more that train was basically empty. So instead we had to wait for the next train that was half the size and packed to the brim. Dad and I didn’t even have a seat until after the second stop. (About 40 min.) So that one was my fault. We wound up being so tired that dad decided we should get off early and grab a hotel, which is where I write this from now. I don’t even know the name of the town we are in. it is defiantly not a tourist destination though. The hotel seems more business oriented. From what I gather, not many tourists make it this far south. I know we are on the southern tip of Honshu. For those of you who don’t know a think about Japanese geography, we are right above the tiny gap between the southern most large island and the main land mass that makes up Japan. (I also know very little about Japanese geography, so that description may not be too accurate.) At any rate, we are in this business hotel and its past my bed time (22:02 local time. Or 10:02 pm) Due to a communication error, Dad and I wound up with our own rooms. Not the worst thing that could happen out of a communication error at a hotel I suppose. So yeah, I’m gonna save this entry, run spell check, save again and then go to bed. I’ll probably end up posting it in the morning once my video uploads are done.

Testing video

Ok, I'm just testing a video upload integrated into the blog entry. Enjoy some footage of otters.

This upload is taking/took a really really long time (hours). I'm gonna go to sleep and hope it's done when I wake up.

Edit: upload took so long my computer went into hibernation and I think it lost the video's progress. So it doesn't look like I'll be uploading video through this blog itself. So instead here is another video that uploaded successfully while I slept. The Whale shark at Osaka Aquarium (watch it in HD if your internet connection can handle it)

And here is something I uploaded to youtube of me ringing a Japanese style bell. (watch it in HD if your internet connection can handle it)

And here is one I uploaded to Photobucket of a spotted manta ray doing loops.

let me know which upload of the three works best for you guys. Also, all of these took a really long time, so if anybody knows a good way to upload videos to the internet, please let me know.

~Daniel

morning with sun

So it turns out that since I'm in japan, the internet here recognizes that and sets a bunch of my defaults to Japanese. For instance the log in section of this page was in Japanese. Anyway, its nearly 8am and the sun is finally out. It's been cloudy and raining since we got here. It's good to see some sun. Its still cold out, but at least I won't have to walk around and try and take pictures while holding the umbrella anymore. On a related note, many of my pictures are not as good as they could have been because i couldn't mess around with my camera settings while holding my umbrella. That being said, they are still good pictures. Here is one of that Zen Rock garden I mentioned.

(Click image to Embiggen)

A pic before sleep

Ok, I'm getting tired, but I wanted to leave you with at least one picture. I don't know when I'll have internet access again, so here ya go folks.

(Click photo to Embiggen.)

~Daniel

Back log 2

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Rail to Kyoto

Ok, so we are on the shinkansen right now. Also known as the bullet train. I’ve always heard about how efficent the japanese rail system can be, and even though we’ve only gone on 3 trains so far, I think I agree with them. Even though we’re forigeners and have no idea where an ything is, we haven’t had any problems so far other then locating the office where we turned in our rail pass exchange orders. That one was my fault, I had us go to the wrong station from the hotel. But the ticket to the correct station was only 120 yen ($1.37) each. And while we were waiting for the train we discovered two things that I was pleased with. Thing one was actually a mistake that dad made. He was trying to get some coffee from a vending machine and what he got wasn’t coffee at all. Ya know what it was? HOT CHOCOLATE! That’s right, this place has hot chocolate in a can from a vending machine. And whats more, it was actually really tasty. This might become a regular thing for me. The second thing we found was actually not a thing, it was a person. We met a guy named Keith who was also waiting for the same train as us. Despite the name, he was actually a Mylasian. Apparently he works in high fashion and travels often. We got to talk to him for about 20 minutes while we waited for the train, as well as while we were on the train. He tipped us off to some ettiqute that we weren’t aware of, and gave us a coupple recommendations on where to go. We were talking in english which was nice. Many japanese people speek english, but so far, it seems like most of them have trouble understanding it at the normal american speaking rate. Or at least how fast we talk in california. Which is understandable. I find the speed native japanese speekers talk in to be incomprehensible. Before we parted with Keith, who was headed back home today, Keith and Dad exchanged buisness cards. Apparently Keith also makes regular trips to San Fransisco. So perhaps we’ll get to see him again in the future. He said he sometimes likes to go into marin to take it easy. I figure mabey at some point we could show him around. At any rate, we have our rail passes now. So that means free unlimited train use for the next two weeks. This includes the bullet trains. At about $500 each, it seems a bit expensive at frist. But considering these passes also include the bullet train, (like I’m on now) where the tickets are around $130 each, it’s a pretty good deal. We essentally have free transit to anywhere in the country. Well, according to my ticket, we only have about 15 mintues left on this ride, so I’m gona pack it up. I wish it wasn’t so cloudy though. You can only see for a coupple miles and it doesn’t make for good pictures. Of course that didn’t stop me from taking a bunch. Anyway take it easy everybody. Jya!